Why you need to read more bad poets

Poets have long been accused of all manner of bad writing – imperfect metre, forced rhymes, a lack of rhyme, shifts in register, bathos, timidity, banality, purposeless stylistic choices, tweeness, a lack of emotional depth, dullness, melodrama, self-importance and so on. Sometimes the badness of their writing becomes, in itself, an amusement. And here, maybe, we need to examine our tendency to mock those less educated or less skilled who, nevertheless, are trying to find a voice.

But bad poetry aside, poets have also been accused of all kinds of crimes – of actual criminal acts as well as faults of character, attitude or behaviour.

This duality of badness – of art and character – is at the heart of our purpose at The Bad Poet Society. (We should also note here, that while our main focus is poets, we are not averse to exploring other types of writer and their sins.)

There are two main schools of thought on the subject of bad poets or, indeed, morally bad writers in general. The first praises the art and sweeps the incovenient truths about the writer under a metaphorical carpet of excuses. The second cancels the artist for crimes big and small, and assigns their output to the rubbish bin of history.

Neither approach can be justified.

Poets have always been people that your mother pointed out as cautionary tales.

Teresa Cottam

Hiding the truth of someone’s character is not simply dishonest, it also impoverishes our interpretation of their work. By not understanding that a poet is a misogynist in his personal life, we can easily glide over the subtle misogyny in his work. By not seeing the violence of his life, we mistake for passion the violence of his poetry.

But cancelling great art because the artist is problematic is also a hiding to nothing and nowhere. Name me the blameless poet – indeed the blameless human.

This trend of cancellation is a foible of the foolish and the attention seeker.

We have today a generation that needs to wake up to its own hypocrisy. To acknowledge the truth: that we all have feet of clay, and that ret-conning history through the mores of today is an injustice that we are doomed to suffer ourselves in due course.

One day our grandchildren will laugh at our lack of sophistication, education and wisdom, become fascinated with the aesthetic of our lives and, at the very same time, be repelled by our attitudes.

Few daughters think their mothers cool. They look at the photos of their twenty-something parents with their poodle perms, white stilletos, shoulder pads, fuchia eyeshadow and rah-rah skirts and think didn’t you realise how ridiculous you looked?

Why do you believe it will be any different for our current beauties with their penchant for caterpillar eyebrows, baby-arsed cheeks, fish lips, anteater talons, cartoonish eyelashes and frozen faces?

Sneer if you like, but expect to be sneered at.

If you haven’t suffered, aren’t suffering and aren’t insufferable, then you’re probably not a good poet.

Teresa Cottam

Now, at the risk of sounding like we are defending bad behaviour, I have to point out the obvious: the whole point of being a poet is to not be normal, or average. Poets are meant to be somewhat tortured. If you weren’t abusing substances, mentally suffering or behaving like an arse, what are you doing writing poetry? What do you have to write about? If you are simply nice, you should be writing greeting cards. The truth is, if you haven’t suffered, aren’t suffering and aren’t insufferable, then you’re probably not a good poet. No-one wants to read about your bland and virtuous life.

Poets have always been people that your mother pointed out as cautionary tales.

And so it is our belief that we should know what our wordsmiths have done, what they think and what they have said. But we should see them in the round – as faulty human beings that suffered and caused suffering. Otherwise what lessons do we learn from their poor choices?

The light of truth means we can see the faults, appreciate the strengths and decide whether we forgive the crimes. We can also see whether the crimes are significant or petty, real or imagined.

On this latter point, Shakespeare brilliantly described a very contemporary-feeling pile-on in Mark Antony’s speech in Julius Caesar. Mark Antony highlights how the character of a man is distorted for political motivations, monstered and scapegoated, distorted and simplified into an archetype. How emotion and storytelling get in the way of fact. How so-called sins overshadow achievements – even as the definition of sin continues to evolve. How perspective is everything. He explains how Caesar’s image is being manipulated even after death; while he actively manipulates the character of Caesar himself.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

What we urge is to understand the whole person and see in the cold light of day their faults, their virtues, their crimes and their kindnesses. Isn’t the point of poetry to explore the nature of humanity? And does that portrait not come with both light and shadow? Isn’t our blindness to the humanity in the monster, just a denial of the nature of monstrosity? It couldn’t happen to us, of course, because we virtue signal our goodness while ignoring our own quiet cruelties and sins. Or could it?

The bottom line is if you don’t read bad poets, but just unquestioningly take someone else’s word for it, you are living on ultra-processed throught – as unhealthy for your mind as stuffing your body with burgers and chips. Read more bad poets, develop an educated opinion, and then tell us why that poet is bad.

Unquestioningly accepting someone else’s opinion is living on ultra-processsed thought – as unhealthy for your mind as stuffing your body with burgers and chips.

Teresa Cottam